Monday, 23 June 2008

Bee is for blog

I asked if I might link, but I haven't had a reply yet, so I'll put the link in and take it out again if they say no. The bee blog is Al's final descent into the baleful influence of his mother. He may kick, he may scream, but he has become a blogger. Heh heh heh.

In the meantime, here is what I tried to say. Luckily I remembered to copy it before attempting to post...

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Nice to see you blogging Al, and on such a worthy subject :)

That looks suspiciously like a National hive. I'll bet you bought it because it looked like a proper traditional (WBC) beehive ? ;)

Is that what others around you use?

If you have as much rape as we do early in the season, you could live to regret it... they will quickly run out of brood space and will consequently be swarming every 5 minutes. But it's (reasonably) easy to make the national box into 12" x 14" ones, using a brood box adaptor kit from Thorne's, and getting larger frames.

Good to see you using Hoffman frames for the brood. In case you haven't already bought them, I'd recommend Manley frames for the supers (they're much quicker and easier to uncap come extracting) and metal castellations for the sides of the super boxes (9s - fewer frames to extract then, the bees will draw them out to bee-space between, so you'll actually get more honey per box).

I'd never recommend that beginners start with only one hive. You've got no scope for sorting out the problems that will arise then. 2 or 3 is really no more work. Are you getting more?

I've left your comment on his blog, BW - but I think he has Open ID, isn't that available to you?

I believe his bee society recommended that sort of hive, and no, we don't have rape immediately around here on the edge of the village, fortunately. I don't know if his queen is marked. He is planning to have two hives with a third for an emergency, but doesn't want more than that for now. Mind you, his honey supplier said that to begin with and now has 150.

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Copyright

Oh, what's the problem? This is hardly Great Literature. I'd appreciate anything taken from here being acknowledged, and I might change my mind if I'm suddenly proclaimed as the Literary Queen of the Blogosphere - but I probably wouldn't. Do what you like, just as long as it doesn't extend to defamation of anyone, even me.

Actually, you want to pass off what I say as your own, I might even be flattered. Let's face it, who cares anyway?